


A Room With a View

by ObliObla



Series: Obli's Fuckruary 2020 [10]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fuckruary 2020 (Lucifer TV), Humor, Masturbation, Post s02e04: Lady Parts, Shower Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22662235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: Chloe's divorce is being finalized, her partnership with Lucifer is once again in flux, and they've been sent to a conference for three days to share a hotel room with a somewhat unusual feature.What could possibly go wrong?
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: Obli's Fuckruary 2020 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619344
Comments: 147
Kudos: 335





	1. Up Against the Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HiroMyStory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiroMyStory/gifts).



> Day 10! (Part 2 to come soon) Prompt: Hotel/Public Sex

Chloe walks into room 316 of the Plaza Hotel and just barely manages not to immediately collapse onto the closest bed she can find. With a delayed plane and a frustratingly circuitous route to this annoyingly out-of-the-way hotel, all she wants is to wash the travel grime out of her hair and pass out. Not to mention that Lucifer whined for weeks to even  _ come _ to this conference, no matter how many times she explained that it would be substantially  _ less _ exciting than paperwork. At least, she notes as she drops her luggage, there are actually two full sized beds in the hotel room. No bed sharing to lead to the inconvenient development of feelings.

No, she definitely  _ didn’t _ read an impressively tropey self-published Romance novel on the plane. Definitely not.

She pulls out her toiletries and pajamas, grunts something approximating the word, “shower,” in Lucifer’s direction, and heads to the bathroom. She flicks the light on and pulls out her face cloth, scrubbing off the worst of her makeup. She’ll deal with the rest in the shower. She strips as quickly as she can manage and pulls the shower door open, stumbling inside, pulling at the tap. Slightly-too-hot water cascades down her shoulders, and she hisses and turns it down, leaning further into the spray. She grabs her shampoo and starts working it through her hair, eyes closing in relaxation.

This conference couldn’t have had worse timing. It’s been less than a week since she and Dan signed the divorce papers, and there’s a knot in the back of her neck she blames on all the waiting. Maybe if she finds time, she’ll visit the hotel masseuse—one of the many amenities she knows she isn’t actually going to use. Or maybe she’ll do what she always does and ignore it until it goes away or she forgets how much it hurts.

She reaches for her conditioner and works out a few tangles, resting her forehead against the warm wall to stretch out her back. Damn coach and its uncomfortable seating. She’d almost felt bad for Lucifer having to cram himself into one of the narrow seats with its appalling lack of legroom. At least until he’d declared it, “unacceptable,” and somehow charmed his way into first class. Leaving Chloe behind. With the plane-shy toddler. And the guy pumping tinny dubstep through his badly insulated earbuds. And the woman who mooned over Lucifer’s brief appearance in her life like a lovestruck teenager.  _ Or _ a horny middle-aged soccer mom with an impressive imagination and very little filter after a few glasses of questionably vintaged Cabernet-Sauvignon.

She reaches for her body wash and loofah.

At least this conference is short. Tomorrow, the day after, and she no longer has to think about  _ New Methods in Interagency Cooperation. _ Nor babysit Lucifer, who she assumes  _ isn’t _ here to learn so much as to annoy her and seduce her colleagues. As usual. He might have sort of saved her life, and she may need the eggs, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still annoyed with him.

She might still be a  _ little  _ upset that he didn’t swing her an upgrade too.

When she judges herself clean enough, she flicks off the shower, steps out onto the mat, and dries herself off. She finishes her nightly routine in a haze of tiredness, pulls on her sleep clothes, and wanders blearily out into the main room, nothing on her mind but bed, bed,  _ bed— _

"Detective, that was quite a show."

Chloe frowns and shakes her head to try to clear it, glancing blearily at Lucifer. "What do you...?" Her eyes flick between his shit-eating grin and where he's looking, behind her. At the wall where the bathroom would...

At the window.

At the window in the wall.

At the window in the wall, displaying the wide expanse of the shower.

What. The. Shit.

Her mind buzzes, refusing to acknowledge the implications of this new knowledge. “H-how is this even a thing?”

“Voyeurs deserve nice things too, my dear.”

She buries her head in her hand, rubbing at her brow.

“I don’t mind, Detective,” he adds, and she knows there’s a salacious grin on his face.

She ignores him, digs through her bag, and plugs her phone in almost violently. She yanks down the duvet on the bed and clambers in, pressing her cheek against the pillow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she will request a new room and figure out a way to get back at Lucifer for perving on her. Again. At least he didn’t strip off himself as some kind of quid pro…

_ No. _

He has managed to make his silent way to the bathroom and is stripping with all the care  _ she  _ didn’t show. He carefully folds his suit jacket and lays it on the counter beside the sink. He  _ slowly _ unbuttons his white shirt, folding it to lie atop the jacket. Then he grabs his own toiletries bag and starts to remove his eye makeup with meticulous movements. He glances over, granting her an indulgent smile, before returning his focus to the mirror.

_ I don’t mind if you watch, Detective, _ flits through her mind, and she turns over on the bed, staring instead at the marginally parted curtains. At the air conditioning unit beneath them. At literally anything other than the temptation playing out behind her. She is  _ not _ going to do this. This does  _ not _ make them even. The shower turns on, and she stays where she is. The subtle sounds of weight shifting echo through the glass, but she is  _ not _ going to look. Minutes pass, and she nearly falls asleep.

It’s nothing, really, that rouses her, just a soft, nearly pained sound that she can barely hear over the shower spray. But it’s enough to get her to roll over, to subtly glance over at the window, only a few feet away from the bed. Lucifer has his back turned, soap suds clinging to his fingertips, his thighs, the line of his hip bones. One hand reaches behind his back, tracing the roughened edge of one of his scars with a washcloth.

His head bows, and he reaches for the tap, twisting the temperature hotter. Steam begins to rise around him, and she should turn away. She knows he doesn’t mind his nakedness, but  _ this— _ the tension in his shoulders, the almost cruel way he scrubs at his back—is intimate in a way she’s uncertain of. Ever since even before Malcolm and everything that happened in that hangar, she’s wondered why he’s still here. Ever since she threw herself at him and woke up in his bed, she’s wondered why she doesn’t mind.

He drags the loofah up over his neck and down his chest, and he lifts his legs to clean down thigh and calf and foot, one side, then the other. Still, she can’t look away. The other times she’s seen him naked, he was performing, but this doesn’t feel like a show, even though she wonders if he somehow knows she’s watching. If he wants her to. The washcloth creeps up his inner thigh and out of sight, and he angles his back into the spray. Soap bubbles slide down his spine, and she watches their progress, down and down and…

He turns to rinse off his side, and she flips over, jams her head back into the pillow, and pretends to be asleep. A few minutes later, the shower turns off, the room goes dark with the loss of light, and the door opens. Chloe shuts her eyes against the sounds of Lucifer moving around the room, turning down the thermostat, pulling the curtains shut. He’s so quiet once he’s settled into bed that she jumps a little when he speaks.

“I didn’t watch, you know.”

She considers keeping up the illusion of sleep, but settles for scoffing.  _ “Sure.” _

“I’m no liar.” He sounds oddly serious, but his tone only brings back her earlier annoyance.

“You called it a ‘good show.’” Her words are more bitter than she’d like; she’d almost believed they were past this. But maybe nothing really has changed.

He sighs as he turns away, onto his side, and says, “Just because it’s a good show doesn’t mean I have to tune in.”

She falls asleep to the steady sound of his breathing, wondering if something’s changed after all.

* * *

Her alarm is loud in the nearly silent room.

She scrambles for her phone, shutting off the blaring noise before sitting up and brushing the hair from her face. In the other bed, Lucifer stirs, mumbles, then grabs a pillow and slaps it down over the top of his head, drifting back off with a beleaguered sigh. His feet are sticking off the end of the bed, and she stares at his bare soles for a moment before turning toward the bathroom. _ Fine. _ If he wants to miss breakfast, it’s his own prerogative. He doesn’t seem to eat half the time anyway.

At least his recalcitrance gives her the opportunity to do her hair and makeup without comment or observation. To change without having to jam herself in the little cubby that holds the toilet. It’s strange standing at the mirror, their toothbrushes next to each other, his toiletry bag sitting on the opposite side of the sink, far more extensive than her own. As she applies foundation she has the dangerous thought that he probably wouldn’t mind if she borrowed his products. 

The divorce papers haven’t even come through yet, she reminds herself, then frowns. Is that what she’s been waiting for?  _ Has _ she been waiting for something? Or is it more that that’s the excuse she’s been using to convince herself this would be a bad idea. There are a thousand reasons they would be a bad idea; she hardly needs to cling to _ one.  _ She shakes her head, picking up her powder brush. It’s just that she hasn’t had her morning coffee yet. It certainly has nothing to do with the images that haunted her dreams, the sensitivity she woke up with between her legs. 

A strong cup of coffee, and she’ll be fine. 

_Two_ strong cups of coffee and a banana nut muffin later, she returns to their room. If Lucifer is going to insist on being here, she’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least attend the first lecture.  _ Jurisdictional Jurisprudence on State and Federal Land,  _ apparently. It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t pass out halfway through; God knows what shenanigans Lucifer might get up to. 

She suppresses a smile at the thought, pushing open the door.

_ “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride…” _

What the…?

Singing. Lucifer is singing in the shower. Lucifer is singing Britney Spears in the shower, in his angel choir boy voice. Whatever.  _ She  _ is going to stand by that ridiculous window with her back turned and project an aura of annoyance so strong he finishes up quick if he knows what’s good for him. She does  _ not  _ want to be late.

_ “With a taste of a poison paradise…” _

She squares her shoulders and walks through the entryway toward the beds. This is a perfect plan that will definitely work. She stands by her bed with her hands on her hips, facing the wall.

_ “I’m addicted to you, don’t you know— _ Mmm. Oh,  _ yes.” _

She spins around before she can even think. Lucifer is standing sideways into the spray, one shoulder pressed against the glass, his eyes closed, his head thrown back. Her gaze involuntarily traces a drop of water as it trails down his throat, over his chest and abs, coming to settle between his legs where he is... where he is...

Chloe.exe blue screens, and her eyes go wide. She’s seen him naked; she hasn’t seen  _ this. _

He works himself slowly, hips rolling into the movement, emphasizing the tautness of his ass. His thumb brushes the head of his cock at the beginning of each long stroke, and his pianist’s fingers twist and grind at the end. His other hand isn’t idle, cupping his balls, scratching his stomach, tweaking his nipples. 

And he’s moaning. Even over the shower spray and through the so, so thin glass she can hear his voice rise in pitch. Can see his muscles tense as he approaches the edge. His rhythm increases, and he rises onto his toes to better thrust into his motions, pulling his calves and thighs and back into sudden, sharp relief. 

The voice in her head screaming to turn away dies with the blood in her cheeks, with the heat and need between her legs. Her clit throbs under layers of clothing, but she can’t make her body do anything more than watch and feel and imagine.

He reaches the verge but holds himself back, biting his lip, tightening his grip around the base of his cock. His body ripples with the effort of restraint, and he growls, teeth clenching. His teasing of himself—his control over his own body—drives her forward until she’s right in front of the window. A play with an audience of one. If only her body was the water sluicing over his chest and down his stomach, surrounding him in heat and sensation.

He turns fully toward her, bracing his hand against the window. His forehead falls against the glass, eyes still closed, breath fogging in waves. He begins to pull on himself roughly in a ragged rhythm that draws a cry from his throat almost immediately. She clenches with a shadow of orgasm, and her breasts ache, nipples stiff under layers of clothing. 

If only the glass could disappear. If only she could knock away his hand and take up his rhythm. If only he could tear off her hot, oppressive clothes and stoke her into a conflagration that burns away all their complications, leaving nothing but the simplicity of skin on skin. 

Every jerk of his hips is the echo of a thrust inside her. Every tremor through his supporting palm is his hand kneading her breast. He widens his stance to increase the strength and speed of his motions, and she gasps.

A flicker of uncertainty crosses his face, but then he’s moaning, long and low, coming against the glass, and the visceral carnality of it drags her from the fog of arousal just in time for his eyes to open and their gazes to lock.

Oh,  _ shit.  _

The shower continues to beat down. Behind her, the air conditioner kicks on. Come begins slowly to wash down the drain. He looks so much more shocked than when she shot him, it’s not even a contest. Water drops tremble where they cling to his earlobes and fingers and softening cock as he drags himself upright. His hair is plastered to his forehead. His hand remains flat on the glass as if it’s the only thing holding him up.

There is something horribly lost in his expression. 

“The conference is in room 105,” she whispers, knowing he can’t hear her. She stumbles backward a few steps before half running, half tripping out the door. 

* * *

Another cup of coffee and twenty minutes of intensely boring lecture later, and Chloe is just about feeling normal again. She can compartmentalize with the best of them, bury every inconvenient feeling until she’s ready to deal with them. So, never, probably. But it’s worked for her so far. 

The speech has turned to the scintillating topic of potential gang activity on national park lands when Lucifer slips into the unoccupied chair next to her. He looks absolutely put together in every way, and she boggles at him, her mind juxtaposing his fine, unwrinkled suit and perfect eyeliner with his wrecked, blissed out expression of a few minutes ago.

It’s distracting, to say the least.

For once, his entrance wasn’t remotely disruptive, which is frankly a miracle, and briefly makes her wonder if her partner has been replaced with a doppelgänger before she decides to just accept her good fortune. It’s not like she’s acting particularly normal either. He’s sitting patiently, almost attentively, and watching her a bit like a rabbit caught in the long stare of a wolf. 

“How did you know where to go?” she whispers as a desperate attempt to break the tension.

He blinks at her slowly. “I read your lips.”

Well, then. 

She turns back to the man at the podium and attempts to actually pay attention. It’s not fifteen minutes before her focus starts to severely slip. She’s always been aware of Lucifer’s presence, ever since they first met. He tends to fill rooms with his magnetism, and though she doesn’t fall for whatever neurolinguistic programming trick he uses that convinces random people to spill their innermost secrets, he’s never exactly been hard to notice. 

It’s so much worse now.

Did he always smell like spice and heat and a gentle musk that makes her want to bury her nose in his neck and never let go? Did his fingertips always play over the soft fabric of his slacks in such a suggestive manner? And his eyes… were they always this dark? Did they always shine this bright? Is this how all those people feel when he gazes into their souls and asks what they desire?  _ You, _ her traitorous mind whispers.  _ I desire you. _

“Any questions?” the lecturer asks, and Chloe jerks back to awareness.

Lucifer watches her through the question-and-answer session, and she wonders if he knows what she’s thinking. Of all things, he looks worried; she wishes he were smug, arrogant, anything but quietly concerned. It doesn’t sit well on his face.

As the next speaker walks up to the podium, she rises, mutters, “bathroom,” and makes her way out of the room. She can feel his eyes on her until the door to the hallway shuts behind her.

* * *

“Come  _ on,” _ Chloe whispers, rubbing tight circles into her clit. But she can’t. She can’t. She  _ can’t… _

She pants, slumping back to the cold wall, using the rim of the sink to hold herself up. With her pants and underwear around her ankles as she half stands, half squats in a single occupancy bathroom, she can admit this is not her finest moment.

She bites her lip, swirling fingertips around her entrance, but she’s so wet her fingers slip over her vulva, dragging through the short-cropped dark hair and away from where she needs them. She badly muffles a somewhat pathetic whimper, and her head thuds against the wall.

“Detective?” a quiet voice asks alongside an equally soft knock at the door.

She drags herself from the wall as quietly as she can, pulling her pants up. She tries to brush her hair down with her clean hand. She has to stay quiet; she has to keep herself together. Compartmentalize. Compartmentalize.  _ Compart— _

“Detective, are you alright?”

She means to say she’s fine, but the words catch in her throat. He doesn’t lie to her; she doesn’t want to lie to him. But she doesn’t know what else to say.

There’s a rattle at the door, and—impossibly—it opens. Lucifer walks in, eyes closed, and she’s so thrown by this strange gesture of respect that the question of how he got through a locked door evaporates from her mind. Everything disappears in favor of the knowledge that what she desires is so close, but she has no idea how to ask for it.

She defaults, as always with him, to exasperation. “Lucifer, you can’t just—” He opens his eyes, and the fear there steals her breath. His gaze drifts from her disheveled hair to her rucked up blouse to her sticky fingers. His nostrils flare, and she feels her cheeks burn, but he only frowns. He glances at the door, and his tongue flicks out to wet his lips—nervousness or arousal, she can’t tell.

“Please, I just need…” She doesn’t mean to say it, doesn’t intend the aching uncertainty underlying the words. But she’s losing her mind with the throbbing between her legs, and all her carefully constructed walls are collapsing under its weight. He walks to the door, and,  _ “please,”  _ she whispers again. Later, she’ll be embarrassed by her desperation. But for now, she is unashamed.

The click of the lock is loud in the silence.

He flicks on the fan, turns around, and finally she sees what she’s been expecting—the lewdness, the arrogance, and the desire. A living, breathing thing that paints shadows in his eyes, sparks hunger on his face, and digs its claws into her belly. He stalks forward and crowds her against the wall

“Is this what you imagined when you were watching me?” he whispers, lips trailing over her hair, down to her ear. He nips at her earlobe, and she gasps.

“Yes.”

He reaches for the button of her jeans and toys with it, licking and sucking down her neck. “Is this what you desire?”

She lets her head fall back against the wall.  _ “Yes.” _

He unfastens the button and tugs her zipper down even as she bucks her hips. He pushes her jeans and underwear down to her knees and trails his hand back up her legs, settling between them. His fingers are strangely tentative—a betrayal that some of his confidence is fake—but his hesitation falls away almost immediately. For once she’s desperately glad of all of his experience.

He huffs out a breath when his thumb finds her clit, and the pressure is so much better than anything she could manage alone. Two fingers dip inside, and she pants, already tightening around him. She’s so close to the edge already, tension thrumming, and she reaches up to fit her palm to her mouth. She tastes herself on her hand and groans.

He chuckles against her neck but doesn’t speak, only twists his fingers and presses tighter to her clit, rubbing a quick, sharp rhythm into her. She cries out around her hand, feet scrambling against the floor. He catches her, holds her, pins her against the wall. And it’s so good, and she can’t… and she  _ can’t... _

She chokes on a breath and wraps her arms around him. They make eye contact for the briefest moment, and there’s uncertainty in his gaze. Some part of her wants to stop, but she’s almost there, almost there… and she turns away and buries her face in the crook of his neck, rocking against his hand.

She comes with the taste of him on her tongue.

When she returns to awareness floating on a sweet but painfully fleeting haze, a hand is working between her legs, but not with any goal of pleasure. Cheap, rough toilet paper cleans her carefully. The toilet flushes. Her underwear and jeans are pulled back up. The button is buttoned; the zipper is zipped. 

As soon as her limbs cooperate, she pushes away from him, stumbling toward the mirror. She stares at her reflection—her lipstick is smudged, she’s working on a bad case of raccoon eyes, and her hair sticks up in a dozen different directions.

“Shit,” she whispers quietly.

“May I?” He’s holding the makeup case she saw beside the sink this morning.

“I… Yeah.” She turns around and shuts her eyes. She let him do far more a couple minutes ago after all. What could it hurt at this point?

He wipes away her eye makeup before reapplying liner and mascara faster than she’s ever managed to do it herself. He swipes the cloth around the edges of her lips before applying more lipstick. He wets his hand in the sink before untangling and flattening her hair. He is businesslike, efficient—he has clearly done this hundreds of times before—and when he steps back and puts the case away, it’s all she can do to blink back the tears that threaten.

She looks in the mirror after he’s done. She has to hand it to him; he’s erased every sign of their indiscretion, every moment of whatever this is that she asked for. Whatever it is he did. She’s steeling herself to leave the room, when she looks back at him, at the tent in his slacks. Hunger seizes her for a moment, followed by discomfort. Never more than now has she wondered where exactly they stand.

“Do—?” She doesn’t even really want to ask, but… “Do you want me to…?”

He shakes his head slowly. “You go on ahead, Detective.”

Her mouth opens around the shape of a word she isn’t sure she wants to say. She shuts it again and leaves the bathroom, heading back to the lecture. A few minutes later, Lucifer joins her. No longer is she incapable of keeping her eyes off him. Instead, she can’t even make herself glance in his general direction. When the second lecture—which she absorbed even less of than the first—finally ends, the audience is led into an adjoining room for drinks and discussion.

And drinks. 

_ God, _ she hopes there’s a lot of drinks.

Chloe doesn’t normally drink at work functions at all, but she acquires a tequila sunrise that’s  _ mostly _ tequila even before Lucifer gets his hands on some whiskey. It’s a mark of how strange they’re both acting that he doesn’t turn up his nose at the questionable quality of the booze  _ and  _ that she doesn’t drag him away from charming the bartender into filling his flask.

His flirty tone and easy manner with said bartender don’t hurt  _ at all. _

She’s about ready to make an early escape, maybe find a restaurant not in the hotel to avoid—hide from—her partner for a while, when, “Detective Decker! Hey!” someone with a vaguely familiar voice half yells behind her.

She plasters an enthusiastic smile onto her face and turns, silently thanking her mother for years of acting classes. “Hi!” she says back, waving at the man whose name she can’t remember. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit, his hair is slicked back to hide an unfortunate bald spot, and every insult Lucifer might devise for him flits through her mind. She grabs her partner by the elbow before he can disappear with one or more interested conference goer back to their room or a convenient hallway, and loudly says, “This is my partner, Lucifer Morningstar.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Lucifer says, taking the man’s hand. “And you are?”

“Brian Wilcox,” the man who is apparently Brian Wilcox says, and Chloe breathes an internal sigh of relief. She’s already one and a half drinks in and not in the mood to deal with social niceties. He turns back to her. “Did you enjoy the talks?”

Before she can make up something that sounds blandly positive, Lucifer cuts in. “Love a good tongue wag.”

Chloe bites her lip to keep from either screaming or rolling her eyes. Maybe both.

Agent Wilcox—Chloe is  _ fairly _ certain he’s an agent of some kind—keeps his focus on her, barely, and asks, “What’s your take on the Thornton case?”

She blinks. She has never heard of that case in her life. But before she can work out an excuse for why they have to leave,  _ now, _ Lucifer again speaks.

“Personally, it seems to me a case of the DEA overstepping.”

Brian scoffs. “Those local LEOs butted in on our investigation.”

Lucifer narrows his eyes, and Chloe’s suddenly worried again. “Your Federal agencies have a habit of bollocksing up drug policy.”

“Oh, I bet you think we should legalize marijuana federally too, then?”

Lucifer smirks. “Of course. In fact—”

“Lucifer, we need to—”

“—decriminalization is the most effective strategy of—”

“Oh, this nonsense,” Brian mutters.

“And, obviously, immigration policy is an  _ utter _ mess.”

“Lunch reservation!” Chloe nearly shouts. “We’re going to be late for—”

“How can you blame—?”

“Well, the United States’ foreign policy is ultimately to blame for a multitude of—”

“We have to go,” Chloe says in a rush as Agent Wilcox’s hackles rise. She tightens her grip on Lucifer and drags him out of the room.

When they make it to an abandoned stretch of hallway, he pulls away and huffs. “What was that for?”

Her heartbeat is loud in her ears, and her blood is thrumming in her veins. She shoves him against the wall and hisses, “What are you playing at?”

He frowns. “Detective, I—”

She presses closer, feeling the heat of him through the denim of her jeans. What is she  _ doing?  _ And why is she so angry? “What  _ was _ that?”

“I thought you might appreciate the distraction from…” He waves his hand. He’s not normally one to mince words with this. The implications make her jaw clench, even though he’s right. Especially because he’s right. 

“I’m  _ fine.” _ Whatever happened to not wanting to lie?

He tilts his head, considering. “I was only trying to help,” he says in a voice so soft it makes her anger feel ridiculous, which only makes it burn hotter. Her hand tightens reflexively, causing her fingernails to scratch against the beige wall paint. She realizes, suddenly, where she is and what she’s doing. The hand that isn't flat against the wall is clenched in the material of Lucifer’s jacket as she pins him to the wainscotting. His breathing is shallow, his eyes are dark, and his hips shift restlessly against the air. It would be so, so easy to press her body against his, to make him fall apart the way he made her.

To zip him back up and fix his makeup so no one can tell what they’ve done.

She takes a breath, two, then steps back, smoothing down the lines of her blouse. Her words are bitter when they fall from her tongue. “I don’t need any more favors from  _ you.” _

His face does something complicated before his expression smooths out, and she no longer has any idea what he’s thinking. He nods roughly. “Whatever you desire,” he says in a harsh undertone before turning and walking away.

He leaves so quickly he misses the first of her tears.


	2. Fracture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's all that damn window's fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so there's three chapters of this now. _Hopefully_ the third will be done soon.
> 
> Enjoy!

After stumbling into a bathroom—a _different_ bathroom—to dry her tears and plaster a neutral expression onto her face, Chloe retreats to the hotel restaurant for something to do with her hands, too buzzed to dare driving no matter how much she wishes she could escape this damn hotel. She orders a salad and barely tastes it. She orders a cup of soup and leaves it untouched. She attends three seminars—each more boring than the last—and one ‘interactive experience’ she keeps expecting to hear Lucifer mock.

But he doesn’t return, so she puts him out of her mind. Or tries to, at least.

She goes to dinner at a subpar chain bar-and-grill—the least Lucifer place she can imagine—then hangs out in the recreational areas of the hotel. She visits the pool and the small spa to little effect. She contemplates a massage but decides it would offer too much time to think. Thinking is the last thing she needs. She considers going for a treadmill run in the gym, but she left her exercise clothes in the room.

The room she will eventually have to go back to

She doesn’t want to change rooms anymore; telling Dan or the lieutenant anything about what’s happened over the past day is _not_ an option. She just wants this over with as quickly as possible. Wants to forget everything that’s happened since she left California and return to the wonderful state of ignorance when she didn’t know what Lucifer looks like when he comes. When she didn’t know how his fingers feel inside her. Where she was sensible and measured and didn’t make a fool out of herself for some guy. She finds herself at the hotel bar. She has one drink, then two. Three seems like one bad decision too far, and she has a glass of water instead.

She runs out of stalling tactics.

When she finally makes it back upstairs, she approaches the room like it’s a wild animal—slowly, carefully, in utter silence. She opens the door and pauses, listening for the shower. The room seems empty; all the lights are off. She takes a step inside, torn between relief and regret. Maybe he went home on his own; it wouldn’t be the first time he’s dropped a commitment. She huffs out a breath and heads directly to her bed. It’s early still, but nothing is going to stop her from immediately—

Lucifer is sitting in the chair in the corner. He is, of all things, reading a book. No, not _a_ book, the _Bible._ He is sitting in the chair in the corner in the _dark_ reading the Gideon Bible from the bedside table. He glances at her but says nothing.

She remembers how his skin tasted on her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and he frowns.

“Shouldn’t that be my line, Detective?”

She shakes her head. “I was being unfair. I-I used you.”

He stares at her, baffled. “You think that I wouldn’t be _glad_ to... That I don’t want—” He cuts himself off and breathes raggedly. The hand that isn’t holding the book tightens against the chair arm like he’s trying to hold himself back. It couldn’t be more different from his carefully controlled presence earlier.

His partial admission makes her feel like she can actually breathe for the first time since she saw him in the shower with his hand on his cock. And yet...

“In the bathroom, you…you turned me down.”

He grimaces and looks past her, probably at that damn shower that was the cause of all of this to begin with. “You didn’t desire me.”

An almost hysterical peal of laughter leaves her involuntarily. Doesn’t he know? Couldn’t he tell when his thumb was on her clit and her arms were around his neck. He can be so arrogant about the draw he has, but he clearly no longer believes he holds any sway over her. And why should he? Didn’t she call it a favor, after all? Isn’t that what everyone does, flitting through his club for a night, never stopping? Never noticing the person behind the persona? Not seeing how the scars lie?

“I’ll just go, shall I?” His voice cuts through her thoughts. He makes to get up, and she puts her hand on his before she can think twice about it. He freezes and looks at her hand, then at her face. Her fingers shake where they touch his skin.

“Don’t. Please.”

For a beat, nothing happens. They might be the only people in this building, on this planet, waiting for something to shatter this endless moment. Words hang in the air, but she can’t bring herself to voice them. The air conditioner turns on with a dull _thud,_ and they break apart suddenly. Once again the dance they’ve been stuck in since the moment they met has reached a tipping point, and once again it has careened back into familiar territory.

She clears her throat, searching desperately for an easier topic. “What, ah… What are you reading?” Some boring moral proselytizing is exactly what they need to escape this awkward conversation. He’ll say something scathing, and she’ll roll her eyes, and everything will go back to normal.

He looks at the Bible in his hand like he forgot he was holding it. “Er… Are you sure you—?”

_“Please.”_

He nods and reluctantly turns back to his page. “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awaken love, until it please.”

This does not sound like boring moral proselytizing. She should have been more worried about his hesitancy.

He glances at her, and, when she doesn’t manage to object, continues, “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? Under the apple tree I awakened thee. There thy mother brought thee forth. There she brought thee forth that bare thee.”

She _maybe_ should have objected, but then he looks up from the book and stares directly at her as he recites, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave, and its flashes are flashes of the grandest fire.”

She swallows reflexively and says, quite distinctly, “Um.”

He raises an eyebrow with none of his usual swagger, less like a challenge and more like a plea. _Please,_ he does not say. _Tell me where we stand._ Or maybe it’s just what she wishes she could ask of him. It was all so much easier before, but she sees no path that leads them back to normal.

He opens his mouth, and, in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever it is he’s about to say, she blurts, “I have to take a shower.”

His second eyebrow joins the other in shock, and he leaps to his feet like the chair has burned him. “Yes, well, I’ll just pop out for a quick…” He trails off, and they stare at each other, standing way too close together. He’s never been great with personal space when it comes to her, and she’s never exactly shied away from touching him. It feels different, now.

She clears her throat again. _No going back._ “It’s alright if you… I mean, I’d like it if… Stay, please.”

 _“Right,”_ he says slowly, like she’s not even speaking English.

“I trust you to not look.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with that. She doesn’t even know why she said it. Maybe she’s tired of all the dancing, or maybe she’s just trying to speed up the tempo a little. This back-and-forth is exhausting.

She turns away and goes into the bathroom, stopping at the mirror to remove her makeup. Out of the corner of her eye she watches him settle onto his bed, still holding the Bible. Tension builds in his shoulders with every moment that passes. Perhaps it would have been kinder for both of them if he’d just left.

Maybe kindness isn’t what she’s looking for.

There’s no way he can possibly hear when she toes off her shoes and socks and starts taking down her jeans, but she swears his spine stiffens when they land in a heap on the floor. This was _such_ a bad idea.

She reaches for her shirt.

When she’s fully naked, she approaches the shower. Lucifer cleaned it thoroughly, of course, but she imagines she can still smell him when she steps inside and turns the faucet on. It makes her brave, or crazy. She’s not sure which is which. Sensible Chloe has disappeared so thoroughly it would take full interagency cooperation to find her again, and since _they_ are currently drinking to excess in the hotel bar, she should probably be marked off as a lost cause.

Brave Chloe, meanwhile, quite enjoys the way Lucifer’s head tilts at the inconstant sound of the shower spray as she fixes the temperature and settles underneath it. For the first few minutes, as she shampoos and conditions her hair, she watches him. Not because she doesn’t trust him, but because he’s there, because he’s doing as she asked, even though she knows what he wants. Damn this window for breaking their holding pattern. Bless it for revealing what they both truly desire.

Her eyes slip closed when she reaches for the body wash. She lifts her hair and runs the loofah around the back of her neck and over her throat, thinking about the press of warm lips. She slides it between her breasts and across her stomach, imagining broad, clever hands. She scrubs at her hip and slips the loofah down her thighs, hearing, _Naughty minx,_ in the hiss of the water around her. She cleans her feet, her ankles, her calves, and when she straightens back up, she wets the loofah and reapplies soap.

She opens her eyes, and her gaze lands on Lucifer again. On his carefully held control, keeping his shoulders squared and his face turned toward the wall. She shifts her weight deliberately and watches what she can see of his jaw twitch.

Her hand drifts to the glass almost instinctively, and she makes a fist.

 _Tap._ The glass is warm under her knuckles.

His hand clenches in the sheets next to where he sits. But he doesn’t turn his head.

 _Tap. Tap._ She wonders, again, what the hell she’s doing. But when he doesn’t look, her hand returns to the window.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

He stands and turns toward her, eyes closed, like in the bathroom earlier. But he doesn’t come closer. The weight of his want—of her own—settles in her veins, and she can’t even see his eyes yet. The darkness in them, the light. That fact is suddenly intolerable, and she gives the window another sharp _tap._

His eyes fly open, his jaw drops, and his gaze burns down her body before climbing back to her face, painting heat everywhere it touches. _I read your lips,_ he said before, she remembers.

 _“You can watch, if you want,”_ she mouths, and with the totality of his attention on her, with the pane of glass between them, she is not afraid.

Shadows drift into his eyes, his smile turns sharp enough to cut, and he strides forward until he’s inches from the window. Desire claws in her belly, marked in his panting breaths against the glass.

She slips the loofah between her legs and sighs from the slightest of pressure. She doesn’t know how to put on a show like he does, but everything she does has his complete attention—every motion of her hips, every pass of the loofah over her skin, every patch of suds that clings to her knees or her breasts or the hair between her legs.

He edges closer until his fingertips are skimming the glass, his hands tracing her curves through the barrier between them. He could easily come into the bathroom and _really_ join her—it’s clear she wouldn’t turn him away—but he is patient. At least, as patient as someone whose hands are shaking and who can’t quite seem to catch their breath can be. She presses her hip against the glass as she lifts her leg to rub the loofah over her inner thigh, and his fingers come up to ghost over her skin. She can’t help the soft hum that leaves her lips at the intensity of his focus, and she doesn’t want to, arching her back a little just to draw his attention even more.

When she’s past clean, she hangs up the loofah and turns into the spray to wash off the soap. It’s still wonderfully hot, and she moans as she imagines every stream of water to be the hands that are so, so close to her. She hears an echoing groan from behind the glass, and her fingers slip between her thighs. She hisses, already sensitive, and widens her stance. Her thumb finds her clit as she teases her entrance, and with a _thud_ his forehead smacks into the glass.

He looks utterly wrecked, eyes following the movement of her fingers, hands and face pressed against the glass. Is this what he saw, opening his eyes at the moment of climax to arousal-darkened eyes and desperate, shaking limbs?

She feels the flush that’s been painting her cheeks spread down her throat and chest. He tracks the heat down when he can stand to look away from her fingers pressing inside. She feels powerful like this, every motion of her hips drawing his gaze. But at the same time she’s never felt more unbalanced, arching her back to press her breasts against the window, her cheek coming to rest near his.

She’s never wanted anyone more, but somehow it’s this barrier between them that lets her find her release. It’s the lack of direct contact that makes her pulse and shudder and come around her questing fingers. She moans, and he moans with her, hands creeping upward to press against the same patch of glass. 

When she comes back to herself, she unsticks her body from the window feeling loose-limbed and languid. He reluctantly pulls away, no longer watching her but not hiding either. She takes it as the concession it likely is. Whatever they just did—whatever they’ve _been_ doing—it’s clearly still not quite enough to break down all of his carefully constructed walls.

The glass still hasn’t shattered.

She cleans between her legs before getting out of the shower and drying herself off. She doesn’t regret this, and she doesn’t think he does either, but it will take more than a couple days at a conference to untangle. And that, she decides as she pulls on her pajamas, is okay. It’s enough for now.

When she emerges from the bathroom, he’s lying in bed. She pulls back the covers of her own and slips under them. She plugs her phone in, sets the alarm, and settles in for sleep.

“Goodnight, Lucifer,” she says as she turns away from him. The steam marks left by her breasts and his lips and their hands are still visible on the window.

“Goodnight, Detective.”

* * *

It’s not enough. It’s not _near_ enough.

Chloe’s dreams are wild, vivid things, haunted by fingers pressing deep, a dark-haired head between her legs, scars painted over finely-toned flesh. Desire waiting in the shadows, scraping its claws over endless panes of glass, never quite shattering them. And eyes—dark and shining and filled with a pain she doesn’t entirely understand, yet she feels keenly. She wakes with a jolt to the door closing and lifts her head to realize she’s alone. She picks up her phone and finds she slept through her alarm.

When she uses the bathroom, pulling the pocket door closed to shield the cubby from the weight of the rest of the room, she scrubs at the wetness waiting between her legs. It’s the only proof of the nature of her dreams. Or were they nightmares? It’s impossible to tell. She dresses in silence, feeling vaguely numb. She applies foundation and blush and lipstick and mascara and glances every few seconds at the shower. At the window that somehow changed everything and nothing all at once. A limbo both of them seem stuck in.

She makes it to breakfast fifteen minutes before it ends. Lucifer isn’t there, and she’s not sure if she should feel relieved. Why is it that this feels so much like an affair without most of the fun parts? She wants to blame it on the divorce not having gone through yet, but she knows that’s ridiculous.

It felt like this before she even signed them.

She downs a cup and a half of coffee in the time she has left before making her way to the first lecture. The potential importance of this conference to her career seems more distant than it ever has; her nonchalance about it is concerning. Lucifer, shockingly, is already here, sitting on one side, legs crossed casually, chatting with his neighbors. Across the room, Brian Wilcox glares at him—she almost forgot their petty squabble entirely with everything _else_ that happened yesterday.

She supposes, now that she’s thinking somewhat clearly, that Lucifer’s method of diverting attention was entirely effective. Wilcox is far too incensed about being argued with to worry about anything Chloe may or may not have done in a bathroom. She breathes an internal sigh of relief.

She considers avoiding Lucifer like he avoided her, but despite his current coldness and the confused nature of her dreams she’s feeling rather warm toward him. There’s some kind of cruel, ridiculous irony in the fact that they keep meeting each other in such different emotional places. It doesn’t help that no one has ever blindsided her like he does. Never has she so thoroughly not known where a relationship stood. _Never_ has she so thoroughly enjoyed it. She flops down on the chair next to him, and he glances over at her in a way he probably thinks is subtle.

“Detective,” he acknowledges neutrally. He stinks of whiskey at nine thirty in the morning and seems stone-cold sober. Must be a Tuesday.

“Lucifer,” she says with a nod.

Thus begins the most frustrating nine hours of Chloe’s life, and considering the years of paparazzi, almost a decade married to Dan, raising a child, and her _mother,_ that’s saying something. For one, the lectures and q-and-a’s and meet-and-greets barrel right over lunch and into the afternoon, and there’s absolutely no time for either of them to get away. For another, if she thought she was intensely aware of his presence before, it’s nothing compared to now.

Because now she knows he feels it too.

No matter how stoic he tries to act, she can read him like an especially pornographic book—the kind that entire countries used to ban for being a bad influence. He _is_ a bad influence, but she can’t bring herself to care. She twirls her hair around a finger, and his hands tighten against his thighs. She bites her pen, and he stares at her lips. She crosses her legs, and his fingers twitch as if they’d like nothing more than to pull up the edge of the skirt she decided to wear today.

It definitely _wasn’t_ to inspire that desperation in his gaze, but it’s certainly a perk.

Tragically, two can play at this game, and Lucifer might be the most allure-aware man she’s ever met. He runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth, and her breath hitches. He bares his throat, ostensibly to stretch his neck, and heat pools in the pit of her stomach. He surreptitiously adjusts himself in his pants, and it’s all she can do to not rub her thighs together. In a moment of weakness—and this whole affair seems composed of nothing _but_ moments of weakness—she almost believes he really is the Devil.

Surely no one else could devise a torture this effective.

She wonders if this was his plan all along—to drive her into such a frenzy she drags him into the bathroom again to have her way with him. Like he still can’t believe that she really wants this. If it is, it seems to have backfired spectacularly, as neither of them absorb a single word of the endless jurisdictional issues being discussed, yet still they sit, next to each other but not touching, trying not to spontaneously combust. Arousal, it seems, is a fine remover of complication. At least in the short term.

 _God,_ he has the worst timing. She’s surprised she doesn’t have whiplash from all his conflicting moods. Not that she can talk after her actions over the past day. She finds, however, that she doesn’t miss the moral high ground nearly as much as she thought she might. The hot-eyed looks he keeps shooting her help. A lot.

Yet when the wrap-up session ends, and scores of conference goers spill out of the room, everything becomes intensely awkward again. She resigns herself, sullenly, to another night of unfortunate, badly-timed horniness and uncomfortable showers, when he finally, _finally_ takes his own leap.

“Would you… That is to say, how would you like to— Have dinner with me?” He stumbles and stutters over his words like a teenager asking the girl he likes to the prom. She finds she rather likes it. Not that she’s any better.

“That sounds… Yes. Yeah. Sure.”

Maybe there’s something in the air that’s melting their brains. Possibly they’ve been poisoned with bad-decision-making juice. Or maybe the dirty ebooks she downloads off of Amazon have started to mess with her mind. She clings to that notion as she drives them in the rental to the restaurant he navigates her to. It’s Italian and more pricey than she’d normally go for, and also concerningly romantic. It’s almost comforting how backwards they keep managing to do things.

They are led to an isolated table where a candle is lit, and Lucifer orders an undoubtedly expensive bottle of wine in apparently perfect Italian.

“What are we doing?” she asks as soon as the server leaves.

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. “Having dinner?”

“You know what I mean,” she says under her breath, and she brings her stocking clad ankle up to skim his calf. Brave Chloe is back in action, it seems. He jumps high enough to rattle the silverware, and when he doesn’t respond, she adds, voice lowering even further, “What else do I have to do to convince you I want this?”

He licks his lips distractedly. “I…” But the server returns with the wine—a red the color of garnets that smells like cherries and raspberries and spice—and Lucifer buries his face in the menu. Chloe takes a drink for something to do with her hands and sighs as the flavor washes over her tongue. The server comes back, and they order—he the lasagne, she the seafood ravioli—before they are once again left alone.

Wax drips down the side of the candle; she takes another sip of wine.

He takes a deep breath and says in a rush, “Your feelings are not the problem.”

It feels like missing a step going down the stairs but a thousand times worse. She shivers as ice rushes down her spine. She had been so sure. _Too_ sure, maybe. The problem with abandoning sensible Chloe was that _she_ knew how to think before she spoke. And before she acted, if she bothered to act at all.

Lucifer cuts through her panic. _“My_ feelings aren’t the problem either.”

She blinks, then blinks again. “So you…?”

 _“Desperately,”_ he whispers, and she shivers again, though not, this time, from fear.

“Then what?”

He inhales sharply through clenched teeth. “It’s… complicated.”

“So uncomplicate it.”

Their salads arrive, along with a fresh loaf of bread and a knob of herb butter. He orders another bottle of wine. This one is white and dry and delicate, designed, she realizes as she takes a sip, to go with the entree she ordered. He reaches into his jacket pocket and fingers his flask, but he leaves it where it is.

“Tell me,” he says suddenly, tilting his head in a way she’s seen dozens of times before, “what do you desire?”

She frowns. “You know that trick doesn’t work on me.”

He shakes his head roughly, but there’s fondness in his gaze. “No tricks, just a question.”

She licks her lips, watching his eyes flick to the movement. “You know.”

He brushes down his lapels, fingers playing with the buttons of his shirt, and shoots her a questioning look. She nods. His fingertips trail to his glass of wine, gliding around the rim of the glass. She nods again. He reaches across the table, his motion full of uncertainty, and takes her hand in his. She exhales slowly and nods once more.

He smiles, and it’s that soft, bewildered expression she first saw after Father Frank died. “Then you must know I want the same.”

It is as close to an admission as she’s likely to get, and it finally, _finally_ feels like enough.

Their entrees arrive, and conversation drifts to easier topics. Neither has any idea what most of the lectures were about, but Lucifer apparently snagged a program Chloe can study on the return flight tomorrow. They talk about work and the food and the wine, and he leads her through the proper Italian names for their meal and its accompaniments, which she stumbles through with a slight blush. He grins indulgently, and it’s light and simple, and the horrible tension that’s been twisting up her shoulders since she first saw the window in the shower slowly starts to dissolve.

It’s almost like a real date and not some weird point one of them is trying to prove to the other.

They finish eating, and she suggests dessert, desperate to extend this camaraderie as long as she can. Despite his assurance, some part of her still believes this might all fall apart again. It has before, after all. They order tiramisu and a dessert wine, and they’re both delightful. Their hands touch casually as they eat and drink and talk, and she relaxes into this. Into him. Into _them._ She’s not drunk by a long shot, but the wine eases her worries just a little.

He pays the bill in cash from his silver money clip, then excuses himself to the bathroom. She stares at the candle as the flame is slowly drowned by pooling wax. There is a drive and a walk and an elevator ride between them and the hotel room, and it is suddenly intolerably far. She stands abruptly. She knows what she desires, and she knows what will make her believe this is real.

Finally, they’re the same thing.

She makes her way to the bathrooms and presses open the door to the men’s before she can think twice about it. Later, she’ll be embarrassed by her desperation. Hell, she’s already embarrassed by her desperation. But as with everything with Lucifer, it makes so much more sense when he’s by her side.

The bathroom is empty, thankfully, except of course for Lucifer, who’s staring into the mirror, futzing with his cufflinks, adjusting them to be perfectly straight. Chloe walks up behind him until she knows he’s seen her by how his motions pause and confusion flits over his face.

“Detective?” he breathes.

But she can’t say it. Can’t ask for what she desires. Brave Chloe and sensible Chloe are two sides of the same woman, after all, and the former has been allowed so few victories. She thinks of the heroine of her romance novel, the unabashed way she rose from the hot springs to stand naked in front of her love interest. She thinks of herself, nineteen years old, rising from a hot tub, taking off her top in front of cameras that took so much more from her than she asked for. And she thinks of a different, older version of herself, from only last night, tapping on the glass, begging for it to be shattered.

 _“I want you to fuck me,”_ she mouths, and his eyes go wide and bright and hungry.

“Pardon?” he asks, voice cracking.

“You know what I said,” she tells him, stepping close enough she can feel the heat of him through his suit. “Not as a favor, not because I _need_ it, but because I want it. I want _you.”_ She hesitates for a split second before diving forward. “Do you want me?”

He spins on his heel and catches her by the shoulders. “So Dad-damned much.”

He clutches at her ass as she rises onto her toes, and his mouth tastes like chocolate and cream and sweet wine when their lips meet. Their teeth clack together in their haste, and he slips an arm around her upper thighs, lifting her as he stumbles away from the sink. His hand slaps against the door, and he must somehow catch the lock because she hears it click shut.

But it’s hard to care about anything when his lips are trailing down to suck kisses into her throat, her legs wrapping around his waist as he finds an empty stretch of wall to press her against. She angles her hips, grinding against him where he’s already hard and hot and wanting. 

Her head thuds back against the wall, and she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, hair mussed, lipstick smeared, eyes shining and almost manic. “This is such a bad idea.”.

“Do you want me to stop?” he breathes against her neck, lips trailing up to kiss the shell of her ear.

“I…” He nips her earlobe, and she gasps.

“You?” he asks, chuckling darkly, confidence finally returned to him. It makes him beautiful and dark and almost otherworldly. Desire’s shadowy claws are his, now, his hand tightening on her hip, hiking her dress up a few scant inches. She shivers from the contrast of hot hands and the cool of the air-conditioned room. His fingertips play at her hem, his teeth scraping gently over her skin.

There’s so much less than glass between them now.

She swallows shakily. “Keep going,” she whispers, and she can feel him smile against her hair.

His fingers slip further under her skirt, grazing the edge of her underwear. He inhales sharply and rearranges them to press his forehead against hers.

“Darling, you’re so wet,” he says into her mouth, a soft growl edging into his voice.

She leans forward and pulls his bottom lip between her teeth, biting until he pushes her harder against the wall. She’s amazed by her own daring, even now, and shame claws at the edges of her mind. But then he’s pushing her underwear aside to slip two fingers into her, rocking his hand intolerably slowly, and she doesn’t care, doesn’t care, doesn’t care _at all._

She grinds against his hand, and he withdraws, laughing, his breath cooling against her sweaty neck. “Eager, are we?”

 _“Yes…”_ she moans softly, but there’s a rustle as someone walks through the adjoining hallway, and ice shivers in her veins. They could get caught. _They could get caught._

But maybe that was the point of this. Her way of proving—to herself, to him, to the world, maybe—that she wants this. Beyond sense, beyond reason. Sense and reason checked out around the time she begged him to finger her in a public bathroom. How much lower can she fall?

How much higher might they climb if she gives in to her desire?

“We’ll just have to be _very_ quiet,” he whispers. “Do you think you can do that?”

 _“Can you?”_ she cuts back, mouthing the words. She heard him in the shower, after all. He wasn’t exactly _subtle._

He chuckles silently as he sets her down and kneels, dragging her skirt up further, peeling off her soaked underwear and slipping it into his inside pocket. He presses his face between her legs not even to touch, just to breathe steadily over her core, until she’s clenching and releasing to his rhythm.

They do not have time for this. _Surely,_ they do not have time for this. She doesn’t really know how this all works. Not that she and Dan didn’t make their share of mistakes back in the day, but never somewhere with an actual wine selection. Not after she resigned herself to being the respectable and reasonable one, and…

His tongue—his annoyingly, wonderfully, _amazingly_ distracting tongue—is gliding up her folds, flicking against her clit, and _God,_ it’s been too long, and _Hell,_ she’s way too worked up when they’ve barely started. He massages her clit while two fingers come up to slip inside, and she tightens around him, eyes slipping closed. She fits her palm to her mouth as her other hand tangles in his hair, and this is so much like the last time but also so, _so_ much better than that ever could have been.

She trips into orgasm with a wet kiss against her clit, and he holds her through it, ducking his head to trace circles over her still clenching muscle with his clever tongue. He teases out a second wave with the bridge of his nose tight against her clit. His hands return to her hips, and he lifts her up—somehow, impossibly—to bury his face up into her. She careens forward for a moment, unbalanced, but one of his hands finds her free one and guides it to tangle in his hair. She grinds down against him with whatever leverage she can find and comes moaning around her hand.

She barely has time to catch her breath before he stands, still somehow holding her, and pins her against the wall. She rests her hands on his chest for a moment before remembering— _quick, quick, quick_ —and reaching for his belt. She unfastens it, unbuttons his pants, and pulls down the zipper. Her palm is met with his heat and urgency, and she tightens her hand around the head of his cock reflexively.

He groans, and his head falls forward to rest against her shoulder. She presses a kiss to his neck and turns to whisper into his ear. “Condom?”

There’s irresponsible, and there’s _irresponsible,_ and it seems sensible Chloe yet lives.

He rearranges them to free a hand and pulls out a packet. There’s a moment when she takes it to rip the foil that could be awkward but instead is filled with breathless laughter and a giddy, shared grin. Somehow this, more than anything, makes her believe that this time— _this time_ —won’t evaporate like a dream when she comes to her senses. She rolls the condom onto him, and he hisses. She chuckles—she knew he wouldn’t be able to control his sounds—but then he’s pressing into her, and she’s choking on a breath.

He starts up a quick, sharp rhythm, and she gives in to it, letting him rock her against the wall. It smells a little weird, and the lights are too bright, and soft, Rat Pack-esque music is being pumped through the speakers, and they could get _caught,_ and she has no idea what tonight might bring, let alone _tomorrow…_

But it’s what she wants, and it’s what _he_ wants, and they can figure everything else out later.

He reaches for the buttons on her jacket one handed, unfastening enough to fondle her breasts through her shirt and bra. She wants his hands on her skin, but this is good too, is more than good when he presses a kiss to the scar above her collarbone. She shakes, clutching at his shoulders, his back, his hips as they snap forward unerringly. 

He comes first, muffling his groan against her throat, then slips his hand between them to drag her over with him. She buries her face into the crook of his neck, breathing shallowly. He disposes of the condom. They fix each other’s clothes and makeup and hair enough to be serviceable and sneak out of the bathroom. Nothing in it feels like obligation.

He’s shameless, of course, but he knows she isn’t, and they make it back to the car without her having to make eye contact with anyone.

“Don’t worry,” he reassures her as they pull on their seatbelts, “I tipped _very_ well.”

She blinks at him as he adjusts the driver’s seat—shaky legs and a few glasses of wine don’t a good driver make—and frowns. “Because…?”

He shrugs a shoulder, turning on the headlights. “I always do.”

* * *

They make it back to the hotel in a companionable silence, and Chloe’s glad of it. Mostly. It is, at least, not awkward, and Lucifer isn’t running away. They return to their room without incident. The mechanical _thud_ of the latch closing echoes in her mind as she turns away from the door to look at him.

“So,” she says as they stare at each other.

“So,” he replies, scuffing his shoe against the carpet.

Her phone buzzes in her jacket pocket, and she pulls it out automatically. It’s Dan, double-checking their travel plans. He sends a picture with the text of Trixie’s latest drawing—a creature in a black suit marked out in shades of red crayon, eyes a flare of orange and crimson. She glances back at Lucifer and gestures at the bathroom door. “I need to make a call. I’ll just be a minute.”

“Of course, Detective.” He turns and wanders toward the beds.

She slips into the bathroom, shifts contacts, and taps a name. The phone rings.

“Mommy!” Trixie shouts, just loud enough Chloe grimaces a little, but it doesn’t stop the smile from pulling at her cheeks at hearing her baby’s voice.

“Hey, monkey, how are you?”

“Great!”

“Having fun at Daddy’s?”

“Yeah!” She launches into a recap of the past couple of days, and it finally feels like whatever dream Chloe’s been in the last few days is over. Tomorrow, she’ll go home to her daughter. To her _life._ Tomorrow, all of this will be a memory. She glances through the window at Lucifer splayed out on his bed, shoeless and in his shirtsleeves, idly changing channels in the darkened room. _All_ of this will be a memory.

“That’s great, pumpkin,” she says to the news of the A Trixie got on her test.

“You’re coming home tomorrow, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I miss you,” Trixie says, 

“I miss you too, Trixie-babe. Goodnight.”

“Night!”

Chloe hangs up and stows her phone before glancing at Lucifer, all long limbs and easy comfort. Everything is still so uncertain between them, so very new. She knows none of this will be simple, _none_ of this will be easy, and she still doesn’t know if all of these parts of her life are capable of fitting together. But she’s willing to try. 

They cleaned up as well as they could back at the restaurant, but Chloe still feels a little gross, so she shucks her clothes, piles them on the counter, and steps into the shower. The warm spray is a welcome relief; she’s almost starting to view this bizarre window fondly. It’s a little hard to see through to the other room with the bathroom light on, but past her own reflection she can see Lucifer’s head turn. A shiver of anticipation shoots up her spine when their eyes meet. She spent far too long pretending to not want him; she refuses to return to that old dance.

He thumbs the television off, tosses the remote aside, and sits up to stare. There’s no need for her to tap on the glass; she simply crooks a finger in his direction, and he rises. This time he doesn’t stop at the window, heading for the door, maintaining eye contact until he disappears.

The door swings open, bringing with it a cool rush of air, but she barely notices the cold, turning instead to watch Lucifer again. He strips gracelessly, dropping his clothes into a haphazard pile beside hers, and she giggles at his eagerness. She’s missed his usual, extreme glee in all this strangeness and complication; it’s made her life so much brighter.

It could be awkward as he slips into the shower next to her. She expects him to shy away, or else to pin her to the wall and have his way with her. The slow burn, or the quick step. Instead, it’s just comfortable. She soaps up the loofah, scrubbing at her arms, her legs, her hips, but when she turns to reach her back, he catches her wrist lightly.

“May I?” he asks, voice rough. She nods and lets him take over, scrubbing down her spine and up over her shoulders. His fingertips brush the sore place on her neck, and she twitches. He hums, pressing a thumb into the spot. “Coach is a terrible thing, Detective.”

She rolls her shoulders as he starts to work on the knot. “Why’d you leave me behind, then?”

“Well…” He turns them so her palms are flat against the window, the hot spray beating down over her back as her stress slowly melts away. “I didn’t think you would find my impromptu upgrade to first class entirely appropriate for a work trip.”

She considers this, pressing back into his hands. _“You_ still went for it.”

He scoffs, voice full of mock outrage. “Of course, I did. My knees were against the seat in front of me! It’s bloody torturous, it is. _Coffins_ have more room.” She snorts rather inelegantly, and he adds, “I would, of course, be glad to arrange improved accomodations for both of us tomorrow.” He leans in to press a kiss against her nape, and she sighs.

“I’d like that.”

He begins to make his way further down her spine, but she stops him, turning around. She remembers the tension in him when she watched him wash his back, only the night before last no matter how much it feels like ages ago. The strange, pained intimacy of it. How much she wanted to soothe away his uncertainty. She picks up the loofah again and rinses it under the showerhead. He follows her motions, tracing their little dance with increasingly dark eyes.

“Can I return the favor?”

He nods, turning to face the wall. She recalls, as she steps behind him and soaps up the loofah, the first time she saw him. _Really_ saw him. And it had nothing to do with his inappropriate nudity, had nothing to do with his snide, certain grin. No. It was in the curving crescents of the scars on his back. The tightness in his jaw when she asked about them, when she _noticed_ them. The strain in his voice when he said, _Don’t, please._

She presses a kiss between his shoulder blades, and he shudders, shifting his weight reflexively. His breath is fogging up the window in unsteady bursts, and she studies his face in the semi-reflective surface. The first touch of the loofah to the bottom edge of the right scar, and his nostrils flare. His jaw clenches, loosens, clenches again, and they exhale slowly together.

“I can stop,” she whispers, but he shakes his head, bracing against the wall.

She doesn’t really understand what it is she’s doing. He told her once this was where his wings used to be, and she doesn’t really know what that means in his metaphor. But she understands the look on his face, the pain but also the desire—its claws are in both of them now. She follows the edge of the scar up his back, wondering again what cruelty they imply. Wondering if they still hurt, or if it’s only the memory that causes the agony.

 _I want to take it all away,_ she wishes she could say. Instead, she traces the roughened ridge of skin with her thumb, and he moans.

“Don’t stop. _Please.”_

She drops the loofah, reaches for the tap, and turns the heat up. Steam begins to rise around them; it’s hotter than she likes, but there’s something right about the rawness of it. She cleans her hands under the warm spray before bringing them to his back. She teases, to start, skimming fingertips up the edges, hesitating before pressing her palms to all that ravaged flesh. He doesn’t seem fragile often, but in this moment she fears he might shatter under her hands.

Maybe they both will.

One hand slips down his back, over his hip, to take him in hand. _“Chloe,”_ he breathes, a word unfamiliar in his voice, and she wants nothing more than to hear him say it again.

She’s never known anyone so responsive. He exhales in moans as she finds her rhythm, pressing their hips together. Her other hand isn’t idle, either, fingertips playing against his shoulders and back. And, still, she watches his face, watches the parting of his lips, the flush in his cheeks, the fluttering of his eyelashes before his eyes shut. A drop of water wends down past his ear, and she leans up to suck it from his neck.

“Oh, Chloe,” he mutters brokenly, and she adds a twist to her motions. He sways for a moment before settling. She can’t look away from his face, the hunger there, the desire. The shadows have returned, and she is not afraid, scraping her teeth over his shoulder, kissing down his spine then up the edge of one scar.

Her own need is growing, and she parts her legs to press more tightly against his upper thigh. He groans at the contact, and she moans after him. He pants against the glass, hips rising into her motions, and she knows he’s close. She redoubles her efforts, bringing her other hand up to press against his scars again. She rubs her thumb over the head of his cock, drags her fingernails down the curve of a scar, and his muscles tense, a groan torn from his throat. His eyes fly open, and...and…

“Detective?” the reflection in the glass asks hoarsely as she stumbles back a step, water sloshing around her feet. The reflection that is Lucifer but is _not_ Lucifer, because Lucifer’s eyes are dark and shining, not red, not orange, not burning, _burning…_

“It’s all true,” she whispers, her legs trembling, her heartbeat tripping in her ears. “It’s all true.”

And she’s falling.


End file.
